A bit of Mozart's Requiem. Image via Wikipedia

…might make a good name for a detective duo. However, this post is not about detection, but about our continuing efforts to learn Mozart’s Requiem and Jenkins’s The Armed Man. I’m trying to listen to both pieces on a regular basis, which is helping me learn them to a certain extent,  but it would all be a lot easier if I was singing the soprano part, because that’s the one that’s usually the easiest to pick out. I find it quite hard to pick out the alto line. I probably need to sit down and listen to the pieces with the score in front of me – that might help.

As I’ve said before, The Armed Man is growing on me. A lot of it sounds deceptively simple, but actually some of those bits are unexpectedly difficult to sing. It’s also been quite interesting, now having the score, to see where the words come from. Some of them are quotations from Le Morte D’Arthur, there’s a poem by Kipling and ‘the Armed Man’ theme itself has quite an interesting history. The pieces as a whole is quite repetitive in places, but that’s good in terms of us trying to learn it all in time for the concert, although it also does that thing where you think it’s going to be the same again but then there’s just a slight difference that throws you off. That was a badly constructed sentence.

Anyway, I’m enjoying the rehearsals, I’m just worried about the performance, but this is not unusual. Still, we have a few weeks to go yet, so maybe (hopefully) I’ll be feeling better about it all by the time of the concerts.

Badger the cat takes a snooze in the garden...with one eye open...

There are more ‘fluffy’ photos on this week’s PhotoHunt page. 

As we’re only a quarter Chinese between us, Mr C and I don’t really do much to celebrate Chinese New Year, although we had a Chinese take-away for dinner tonight! We spoke to Mr C’s family in Malaysia yesterday, including his Chinese grandma, who was using Skype for the first time. It was nice to be able to see her via the wonders of the Internet, even though we couldn’t see her in person. Fortunately, Mr C’s mum didn’t make us sing the Gong Xi song (I quite like the klezmer feel to this version!) over Skype!

Last year, we were in Malaysia, so we did a bit more celebrating, mainly by eating lovely food and watching lion dances, which is a traditional thing to do at new year. Lots of shops, shopping malls and hotels in Malaysia host lion dances, as they’re supposed to bring good fortune to the business. Here are some pictures from last year’s CNY:

Last year was the year of the rabbit - there were lots of rabbits everywhere, including some rather large ones outside the Central Market in Kuala Lumpur.

The lions get ready to go into the Central Market, Kuala Lumpur

A lion dance in one of the shopping malls. This one was particularly acrobatic and impressive as the lions were dancing on little platforms.

Lion dances are often very loud - lots of crashing cymbals and ringing of loud bells.

Decorations in the shopping mall (of which there are many in Kuala Lumpur)

The lions go round the crowd giving out oranges, for good luck.

It's traditional to have a crysanthamum plant in the house at Chinese New Year.

Fields near my parents' house. Looking over to the nearby village.

There are more blissful photos on this week’s PhotoHunt page. 

Here are the latest in a long(ish) line of long fingerless gloves. These were for another colleague! I may soon be starting a scarf in the same wool. It’s nice wool – well, I like it, and lots of other people seem to. (Patons Colour Works Aran, in case you’re interested).

Dandelion in the park. It's just about circular! Taken in October 2011.

You can see more pictures of circular things on this week’s PhotoHunt page.

Last week at choir we started practising a Les Misérables medley. I’ve never seen Les Misérables, or heard many of the songs all the way through, and I only know some of the tunes of the songs from having to play a (different) Les Misérables medley in an orchestra. I think I was playing the bass guitar at the time (a long time ago). The men of the choir requested this piece of music because (I suspect) they now have the chance to belt out ‘Do You Hear the People Sing‘ at full volume on a regular basis.

In Other Choir, we’ve started rehearsing The Armed Man. I’ve been listening to it a lot, to try and get at least some of it in my head. Some of it’s quite repetitive, which is good from the point of view of having to learn it. I think it’s growing on me, which is just as well really, as I’ll probably have to listen to it and sing it lots of times for the next couple of months.

At work, I’m continuing to catalogue the hundreds of music scores. Six large boxes of them arrived on Monday. I wonder how long it’s going to take me to finish them all…

Ceiling of the Arab room of the Cardiff Castle apartments

You can see more pictures of “bling”-y things at this week’s PhotoHunt page.

Wordless Wednesday